What if You Could Put Playground Monitoring on Autopilot?

This is your biweekly dose of playground knowledge from someone who's spent 20 years inspecting them.

In this issue, I’ll share with you the exciting playground monitoring system that my team and I have been working on, and offer you a chance to get in on the ground floor.

I’ll also share a brief interview with Jared Darlington, Director of Sales at NVB Playgrounds, about what he learned from a recent maintenance expo he visited.

All that and more lies ahead in The Playground Post.

In previous issues, I’ve laid out several scenarios where playground monitoring helps fend off potential safety hazards. Although I could sit here and hypothesize all day about the effectiveness of QR-based monitoring, my team and I have reached the point where we’re ready to put theory into practice.

This is why I’m thrilled to announce PLAYSafe360, a revolutionary playground safety monitoring system that streamlines the monitoring process.

Here’s how it works.

Stickers with QR codes are placed at key areas throughout the playground. Think posts, sides of slides, climbers, anywhere that a parent might be able to notice them. The idea is not to cover the entire playground in stickers, but to place them at the typical eye level of adults who may be present.

Then, when someone sees something worth reporting, like a broken swing chain or an exposed edge, they scan a QR code, which guides them to a brief form that they fill out and submit.

Lastly, the time-stamped form is sent to the playground’s decision-maker (oftentimes a principal, park director, or HOA president), at which point they are able to address the issue with their own staff, or forward it to a Certified Playground Safety Inspector.

That’s it. Some things in life are just that simple.

In the next issue, I will be sharing a special offer for Playground Post readers, which will allow you to get in on the ground floor of this exciting program. Stay tuned for the next issue for more details.

As temperatures heat up around the US and the sun shines more frequently, perform some spot checks on your playground to gauge the temperature of equipment and surfacing at peak heat hours. Rubber poured-in-place surfacing and rubber mulch surfacing (particularly in darker colors like black) tend to radiate heat. If you find scorching temperatures, consider switching your surfacing to engineered wood fiber mulch, which tends to be the best surfacing option for excessively hot climates.

Additionally, the CPSC tells us that metal and plastic equipment can often exceed 150 degrees Fahrenheit on sunny days. On such days, make sure that your kids know to stick to equipment in shaded areas, and steer clear of hot equipment.

In the playground world, learning from one’s peers is critical to long-term success. Few know this better than Jared Darlington, VP of Sales at industry leader NVB Playgrounds. Boasting 15 years of sales experience, Jared has been in the commercial playground and monitoring markets for the past three.

I recently caught up with Jared about his trip to the IPRA Maintenance Expo just outside of Indianapolis, Indiana, where he was able to learn about the maintenance processes used by other industry leaders, and how those lessons could be used in the world of playgrounds:

What were some of the highlights from the maintenance expo?
The expo was heavily focused on preventative maintenance as a way to reduce long-term costs and extend equipment life. There was also a strong emphasis on maximizing limited budgets and department headcount, with many solutions centered around improving efficiency, prioritizing repairs, and doing more with existing resources.

What did you learn about how other companies are doing playground maintenance?
Most organizations use some form of tracking, typically either digital or written logs, but this tracking is often fragmented, creating one-off processes across sites. This leads to inefficiencies and highlights the need for more centralized systems. Many are also implementing structured inspection schedules while balancing internal teams with external specialists.

What are some lessons that apply to playground monitoring?
Real-time reporting improves response time and overall safety, while consistent documentation reduces risk and increases accountability. Simple, easy-to-use tools drive adoption, and centralized dashboards improve efficiency. There is also a clear opportunity to introduce a community reporting component, allowing users of the playground to help identify issues in real time. Overall, the opportunity is to replace fragmented tracking with a unified system and move toward continuous monitoring rather than relying solely on periodic inspections.

I’m thrilled to give you guys the opportunity to access an early version of PLAYSafe360. It’s a system that I’m passionate about, and my hope is that kids across the country will benefit from the safer environments it’ll help foster.

If you’re interested in how playground monitoring can effect positive change on your playground, reply with the word SAFE and I'll send you more details.

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Talk soon,

Nic Breedlove

Certified Playground Safety Inspector

20 years in the game. Still learning.